Tuesday, June 27, 2017

"Stagecraft Vs. Screencraft"

When the onstage Oscars
presenter announces the winner for Best Actor or Actress, somewhere in America
an editor is smirking.

We’d had an uneven experience, attending two theatrical productions
on consecutive nights. Alone a daunting
L.A. accomplishment due to the cautionary word:
Traffic. No new freeways built in
fifty years; ten times as many people driving the thoroughfares.

Message to The Easily Frustrated: “Stay home.”

We didn’t. Because
we’re courageous. And also desperately
bored, television being, um… is it possible they miss me? And jettisoned others of my comedic ilk who
could arguably do better?

Just wondering…

Anyway, seeing two plays in rapid succession brought to mind
the identifiable contrast between stage acting and acting in movies, which is
not just “different”, it’s easier.

“Easier”, mostly. Though not, admittedly, entirely.

Notwithstanding our minimal enthusiasm for the first play – Dry Land – even there I nonetheless marveled at the actors’ ability to remember all
their lines in the correct order, plowing admirably ahead – sans intermission – without a single,
“Can we stop for a second? I forgot
where we are.”

There was also, as we sat watching, credible, escalating
character development. We witnessed the
emerging “take charge” maturity of the teenaged character facilitating the
“do-it-yourself” emergency pregnancy termination, and the escalating discomfort
of teenager in labor. (I think this play
seriously got to me on some level; I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. And not just because of the ninety-eight
dollar – for two – ticket price we coughed up to watch a simulated abortion. Although Dry
Land may have lacked sufficient insight and layering, it still somehow viscerally
hit home. Now, returning gratefully to
the point…)

Why do I say movie acting is easier than stage acting?

Because it is.

And wherefrom my sustaining evidence for this contentious
conjecture?

Wherefrom right here:

More stage actors are dying to do movies than there are movie
actors are dying to do plays. And it’s
not about money; big stars can score financially anywhere. They just don’t
want to do theater.

Movie actors may pretend
to want to do theater, encouraging approaching playwrights to “Call my agent”,
then hurriedly instructing their agents, “Tell them I’m busy.”

The writer you are now reading asserts – with neither assiduous
research nor anecdotal corroboration, he just believes it to be true – that the
majority of movie actors are frankly terrified of going onstage, minus the movie
world’s comforting “protection.” Bad
enough stage acting requires you to memorize your whole part at one time, there
is no rescuing “Take Two.” What you do
is what you did.

For budgetary reasons, movies are invariably shot out of
sequence. This cinematic necessity
hamstrings the actor’s developing “through line.”

Imagine you have an “uplifting” movie where, essentially, a
sad person becomes happy.
Gradually. It’s not like, “I’m
sad; I’m happy!” – that’s a twelve-second movie. Instead, over an hour-and-a-half or so
duration, the cloud of gloominess recedes and matters begin to look sunnier.

That’s a movie.

The problem for the movie actor is trying to delineate that ameliorating
arc when the scenes are shot disruptingly out of order.

DIRECTOR: “Okay, remember in the scene we shot
yesterday where your character felt a glimmer of possibility? Well today’s scene takes place earlier, when
they didn’t. Your scene’s co-star was unavailable
then, so we are going a bit “backwards.” Not back to the beginning, where you
felt utterly hopeless; you feel better than that, though not as good as you
felt yesterday. And leave room for the
scene we’re shooting tomorrow, where we emotionally ‘split the difference’ – you
feel better than you feel today although worse than you felt yesterday though
considerably better than you felt at the beginning.”

“Call my agent! I
want to do theater!”

In that regard, acting
in movies is uniquely challenging. Unlike
a play, where you can gather an emotional head of steam, the necessity to
generate non-sequential, instant feelings in movies is like popcorn – “Pop!” –
I feel this way; “Pop!” – now I feel this
way. No bolstering build-up; you have to
jump in and act.

I do not know how they do that. I only know this. If you stink up the place, they yell “Cut!”
and you do it again. If you continue to
fall short, they fashion a credible – possibly Oscar-winning – performance in the editing room. Which could easily happen and probably has.